9

Induction

The tarred road out of Accra stopped abruptly not long after we passed the gates to the university campus on the left, the airport on the right, and the recently erected Black Star arch, one of many extravagant symbols of Ghana’s independence: the surface thereafter was rutted laterite with a deep ditch on each side. These ditches were the graveyard of so many lorries that soon I was counting them. The number was unsurprising, taking account of the speed at which most were driven. A few slow specimens progressed in a curious crab-like way, their axels twisted beyond repair. I was fascinated by the slogans that adorned these ‘mammy lorries’, as they are called in Ghana: ‘Snakes and Women’, ‘Only Jesus’, ‘All Africans are Brothers’, ‘Trust in God’, ‘Fear No Devils’, and, ironically, ‘Travel Safely’. All were overloaded with exuberant passengers, cheering and waving any time Fergus thought it prudent to pass – a manoeuvre requiring sangfroid and fierce acceleration to penetrate the dust and establish there was no oncoming traffic.

We climbed the escarpment that overlooks the Accra plains, a site favoured by government ministers for their luxury residences. Wayside villages offered the hazard of unfettered goats, chickens, and sometimes children, as well as deeper ditches with sharper sides. Suddenly we entered the forest zone, where giant cotton trees with massive buttresses at the base supporting smooth silvery trunks soaring to gaps in the distant sky lined the route. From time to time, a clearance in the roadside vegetation marked the entrance track to some hidden village. Often a small group of children would gesticulate furiously that they had something to sell. I would have liked to stop, but Fergus was adamant that we would lose valuable time in protracted negotiations, only to buy something we could get at half the price in the next market. There was an added risk of emotional blackmail if offered a deliberately orphaned or injured animal: he spoke from painful experience, blaming sentimental Europeans for encouraging the practice. I came into this category, and newly imported women were notoriously vulnerable. Later I became victim of the persuasive powers of Muslim traders in wood carvings, woven blankets and crocodile skins. I have always loathed the concept of bartering, but Fergus said it was a tradition to be enjoyed by both parties. So I tried hard, once pointing disparagingly to a hole in the skin of a small crocodile – embarrassed giggles ensued and Fergus intervened, hissing at me: ‘It’s the anus, you dimwit.’ He and the trader, who knew him from bachelor days, then embarked on a session of good-natured banter, before concluding a deal satisfactory to both.

Shortly after we left Kumasi, school geography lessons describing rain forest giving way to savannah grassland came to mind as the overhead canopy and giant cotton trees phased out, and open country dotted with assorted bushes and trees, and massive sculptural ant hills came into view. Fergus, who had a set of Bannerman’s Guide to West African Birds, was able to name the unfamiliar exotic birds: flocks of common bee-eaters, guinea fowl, various shrikes, a stunning long-tailed drongo, bulbuls, and the occasional ground hornbill. A few small rodents skittered across the road, but as Fergus sadly remarked, little game was left because anything that moved was regarded as ‘chop’ designated for the pot if it could be shot, trapped, or caught by any means. We did, however, see a troop of baboons, some vervet monkeys, and the flattened corpse of a large snake, before reaching the escarpment on which the research station and housing for senior staff had been built. The site for the headquarters of the Medical Field Units (MFUs) had been chosen when British colonial influence in the Gold Coast was at its height by Chief Medical Officer B.B. Waddy. The current director, David Scott, was Fergus’s ‘national counterpart’. David was a relic of the old colonial system, known and respected by both Africans and Europeans, but nevertheless a despot, and ill at ease to find himself lumbered with a UN counterpart – albeit a parasitologist rather than a medical officer – for whom he was expected to provide transport, laboratory facilities, field and laboratory assistants, and a house.

We drove up an incline, past the laboratory block, to a compound where twelve modern bungalows were scattered among ancient mango trees. Some were surrounded by flowerbeds, an indication that the occupants were European, others stood much as they had been left by the builders, but with a dirt yard populated by children and chickens. Each dwelling had a group of pawpaw trees, frangipani and oleander bushes and the ubiquitous bougainvillea; many had beds of strident canna lilies, and masses of blue morning glory climbing the walls. First impressions were good, although on inspection it was clear the houses were badly finished. Shortly after our arrival, I traced the cause of the cascade from the roof above our bedroom – loose guttering jointed with dried-out putty. A mosquito-proofed porch led directly into the central living area, to the left of which was a large kitchen with a big wood-burning range, a double Belfast sink, rudimentary shelving and several deeply scarred wooden tables encrusted with grime. Everything was smoke blackened. Outside were a woodpile and area where clothes washing took place, and callers were entertained to mugs of strong sugary tea. Enquiry about washing methods revealed that buckets and enamel basins were preferred to the sinks in the kitchen, where cold water was on tap. After being wrung into a tight rope, washing was hung to dry on a line – Fergus having discouraged the use of bushes. Improved methods would have to be tactfully introduced. Ironing, with a collection of different-sized heavy charcoal irons, was also done in this area, and any iron considered too hot plunged hissing into a bucket of cold water. Here too neighbours, aspirant garden boys and casual traders would congregate to chat with Adda while he worked – I had a lot to learn.

Painters from the Public Works Department were instructed to paint the kitchen: they arrived promptly at seven thirty but did not start work until nine, having taken time off for morning chop. No attempt was made to prepare the walls before the first thin coat was applied to the walls; the result was dirty grey streaked in places with white. Two hours later the workforce was comfortably lolling on a variety of seats outside the back door. I stirred the lumpy mixture used and understood the streaks, but not why it was taking such a long time to dry. The head painter then said this was all they had, but notwithstanding they would return the next day. It was my first experience of a master obstructionist, and I remembered Albert Schweitzer’s advice: ‘Never get into an argument with your garden boy, he will always win.’ I pointed out that in the absence of paint there was little point in their returning, and told him and his team to make themselves scarce. I got the impression that Adda was enjoying the impasse, and had, in his role of translator, deliberately fuelled the flames. At this point Fergus appeared, quickly assessed the situation, and reinforced my order that they were not to return until a supply of Snowcem was in hand. Crestfallen, they dispersed.

The opposite wing contained two bedrooms and a bathroom at the end of a dark corridor. Inside the mosquito netting were glass-slatted louvres adjusted by metal levers. In theory the mosquitoes were kept out, but a great variety of insects got trapped, only to batter themselves to death between netting and glass, from where they were difficult to remove. Vacuum cleaners did not then come with the variety of nozzles we now expect, although I had brought a spherical Constellation – now a design classic. Prior to that, cleaning had been done by dustpan and brush. Electricity, from a generator situated near the laboratory block, went off at ten in the evening. Hot water for the bath came from an ill-disposed bottled gas geyser, supplemented by the contents of a giant black kettle, which sat permanently on the warm kitchen range.

After much conflicting advice from friends in Ireland and Accra, Fergus had installed a hi-fi record player, complete with stereo amplifiers, and we had a collection of long playing records, some of which survive to this day. There were no curtains, but I had bought a Singer hand-powered sewing machine in Accra, as well as some material, and set to work, wishing I had taken more notice of my mother’s expertise – she could cope, not only with curtains, but loose covers, jodhpurs and riding habits. I do not imagine she was ever called upon to turn a shirt collar, something I had to tackle after we moved to the far north two years later. At night, after the generator shut down, we depended on kerosene lamps, of which I was afraid, seeing them as a fire hazard. I never mastered their idiosyncrasies, any more than I conquered the rusty tank and burner that fuelled the refrigerator. Both of us spent frustrating hours, kneeling on concrete, among spiders’ webs, sugar ants and cockroaches, trying to coax our own specimen into action, as well as those at rest-houses if the caretaker had given up hope. Keeping refrigerators working was a nightmare of wick-trimming, recalcitrant burners, glass chimneys and mantles, which cracked and broke, with spares, when available, hundreds of miles away.

Wherever one travelled in Africa, the dream of ice cubes and cold water at the end of a long journey was seldom realised. A caretaker, if he could be found, would only recently have filled the water-filter, and the refrigerator would, with luck, begin to chill before night fell. The ice-cube container was often missing, so we learned to bring our own, as well as a tin-opener, egg whisk and at least one saucepan, not to mention tea towels and wipe-cloths. Most caretakers used a bunch of twigs to sweep the floors, and the arrival of visitors was often a surprise, despite the reservation having been made well in advance through the district office.

I soon adjusted to rising at dawn, early breakfast, and the departure of Fergus for a working day which ran from seven in the morning to two in the afternoon. Adda had, as is the custom, recruited one of his extended family as a ‘small boy’: which meant he got a cut from the youth’s miserable monthly wage, and Adda’s own workload was lessened. I was not happy about the arrangement, as it meant even more loss of privacy, and many of the ‘services’ offered were a source of irritation: cushions would be plumped, tables, on which one had reading matter, taken outside when the floor was cleaned in preparation for yet another coating of Cardinal polish, or ‘Calindar’ polish, as Adda wrote it on his shopping lists (his fair English and good handwriting a tribute to the White Fathers), while feeble efforts were made with a feather duster to remove dead insects from the screening.

There was an Edwardian element to the situation: I had the key to a storeroom in which we kept bulk supplies and our duty-free liquor allowance, and Adda had to ask for release of bar soap and cleaning materials. It was accepted practice that a blind eye be turned on servants’ consumption of sugar and tea, and the amount of soap used not questioned, even if it was suspected that some might have been sold; all other commodities were sacrosanct. Tins of Hero Black Cherry jam, of which we ate little, were a frequent request, and the amount of Blue Band margarine asked for did not tally with what we were using. For baking, I had bought tins of Spry, luckily not so popular. Fergus voiced his suspicions about the boy to Adda, who conducted his own inquiry. Apparently stores in the servants’ quarters had also been filched, so the ‘small boy’ was sent back to his village in the north.

The director’s house was an imposing two-storey edifice; built at the highest point of the compound by the founder of the MFUs, it had a panoramic view over a vastness of savannah scrub, where guinea fowl were abundant, and it was rumoured a few lions had survived decades of indiscriminate hunting. Shortly after my arrival we were invited for dinner. David was of the old school in which protocol is strict and conventions observed, yet his counterpart had blatantly installed, not a wife, but a ‘kept’, apparently married, woman, in one of the official houses. It must have been a testing situation for him, and I look back on my initial performance with some chagrin: he was discomfited on his own patch and I made little allowance for that. I was impossible to pigeonhole, and he had probably never been faced with a similar situation, although one of his medical officers, a Tamil, had recently brought a very pale-skinned, sariwearing bride from England.

We got on surprisingly well and enjoyed one of his formal dinners, which varied little over the years. Simba, his servant of long standing, served consommé with freshly baked rolls, roast guinea fowl stuffed with Paxo, accompanied by rice and a mixture of small aubergines and sweet red peppers; the pudding was a pink foam concocted from jelly cubes and Carnation condensed milk. After the meal, we sat on the terrace, companionably sipping coffee and liqueurs under a starlit sky, against a background of croaking frogs, while geckos gorged themselves on moths.

David read Blackwood’s Magazine, and we read the Guardian and the Listener, although we soon changed to the Sunday Times and the Observer, always at least three weeks late, and costing five shillings. The BBC World Service was an invaluable link with the rest of the world, but reception was poor and, like the refrigerator and lamps, a cause of many obscene outbursts from Fergus as he repositioned the set in various positions, using a variety of aerials.

David had a pedigree female Siamese cat on which he doted, a collection of fine Persian carpets, some family silver, and several foxed engravings of the Northumberland coast. He grew Jerusalem artichokes, and any other vegetable tolerant of the unforgiving climate. For recreation there was a murky swimming pool and one cement tennis court with greenery sprouting from its many cracks. Fergus soon had the court made playable, and found several enthusiasts among the field assistants and the doctors. This was dangerous territory, as David, while captain of Kintampo Tennis Club, seldom made an appearance on court, and, to put it mildly, was not athletic. The club was almost defunct, but with our arrival interest in the game revived. We had to tread carefully, and matters were not improved when our common black cat impregnated David’s Siamese; he made no effort to conceal his annoyance, and relations were distant for weeks after a splodgy litter was delivered. We were not told their fate.

Months later a tennis match was arranged against a team from Lawra, a village in the north bordering the Ivory Coast. The ball boys, a few of whom turned up naked from time to time, were told that shorts were to be worn for this event. Plans escalated to durbar level, and David, now president of the club, welcomed the visiting team, accompanied by two tribal chiefs, in full regalia, who thundered into the compound mounted on short-reined, snorting stallions. This was exceptional because horses, notoriously, did not thrive as far south as the Ashanti region. Placated by his eminent position, David fulfilled the role of gracious host and presented the prizes, most of which went to our own team, apart from one singles player from a remote village near the Black Volta, so naturally gifted he would, if transferred to the UK, have been a county player. In the words of Francis Kofi, a senior field assistant: ‘We beat them into the ground.’ It was almost midday when Fergus and I gave way to pressure and played an ‘exhibit’ match against Karel Sin, a Czechoslovakian surgeon, and his wife, Marta. I was by this time better acclimatised, but found the experience, despite the applause, utterly draining. At the end of play the ball boys got pocket money and ice cubes to suck – a great treat. The adults downed Tusker beer, Pepsi-Cola and Fanta, before the visitors went to spend the night dispersed around the compound, leaving at dawn the following day on their the long drive back to Lawra.

My horizons were being widened on a daily basis: our immediate neighbours were Dr von Haller, his wife and two daughters, who came during school holidays. Von H. displayed many characteristics I had found intolerable in Rudolf, but Frau von H. was a pleasant, animated woman who claimed to be an artist of some standing; this was hard to swallow judged by the efforts displayed in their house. She was intrigued by the dominance of laterite in the local scene, painting it a raw terracotta, conflicting with pillar-box red flame-trees, purple bougainvillea – canna lilies, zinnias and orange Cape marigolds thrown in for good measure. Their girls were charming, deferring always to Pappi, and coming to me for advice on how to deal with a cat that belonged to the children of the Ghanaian accountant, but which repeatedly came to them, quivering with fright, for succour. Conscientiously they took it back, but it always returned. Despite Fergus’s embargo on pets, when the girls went back to Germany the cat adopted us.

Luciano Rosei, another of the resident medical officers, came from Rome with his wife, Maria, ancient mother and two young children. He was pleasant and spoke English with enthusiasm; Maria, painfully shy, spoke haltingly. The children knew only Italian, as did their deaf grandmother who lived in a world of her own, munching and nodding her way through memorable meals prepared by her daughter-in-law. They often invited us, and it was our first experience of authentic Italian food. I learned how to make pasta with the aid of a machine bought at the UTC store in Accra; how to prepare beef, chicken liver and tomato sauce for tagliatelle, and to assemble lasagne. What came as a shock was the number of courses served: antipasta, little artichokes, a pasta dish, followed by steak and frites, fruit, cheese and biscuits, finishing with ice cream and coffee. Conversation was exhausting and topics limited because of Maria’s poor comprehension; the unfortunate Luciano had to bawl a translation to Grandma, whose nutcracker face remained expressionless throughout her munching. The children ate small portions early in the meal before being dispatched to bed. A sullen-looking steward in a fez, assisted nervously by Maria, served the meal. Reciprocal entertainments were poor in comparison, although I remember producing a delicious toad-in-the-hole and classic English trifle, which was always a hit with the French, Germans, Poles and Italians. Pride disallowed my use of Bird’s famous powder, but I could have saved myself much futile egg-breaking had I done so. Of eggs bought by Adda at the Kintampo market, roughly half were past their ‘sell by’ date, so one learned always to break them singly. The steady supply we anticipated from our own chickens never materialised, as they were picked off one by one by a literal snake in the grass.

To compensate for the inadequacy of our ‘table’, we provided translation services for all the medical officers who were required to send a quarterly report of their activities to David. This was often tantamount to writing the report, based either on a verbal account or a draft copy from the author scrawled in longhand or, worse, typed in single spacing without punctuation. At that time my typewriter was an Olivetti portable. The Imperial and Royal machines in the office block being for the exclusive use of the typists who dealt with the director’s correspondence, Fergus had to rely on David’s goodwill – and that of the typists – for secretarial services. I cannot recall how it came about, but soon I was dealing with all correspondence to WHO headquarters in Geneva and the regional office in Brazzaville in the Congo Republic, as well as editing and producing monthly reports to the WHO representative in Accra. At field level things were better: Fergus could rely on Francis Kofi, three junior assistants, a driver and a Land Rover. One of the juniors, Daniel Kofi, Francis’s younger brother, proved to be a gifted draughtsman, capable of drawing maps, diagrams and tables related to the field studies. To reproduce these for quarterly reports, as I had no official position on the project, it was necessary to be circumspect about use of the darkroom, so as not to antagonise any of the ‘technicians’. Unfortunately it proved far from lightproof and I had to resort to fumbling about in our bathroom late at night. Photocopiers were in their infancy, multiple carbon copies of letters commonplace, telephone services erratic, and mail generally slow.

Fergus and his team were conducting snail surveys at bilharziasis transmission sites throughout Ghana – the Volta River project was in its infancy, and Lake Volta did not exist. The collection of snail species was vital, being the intermediate hosts of both the intestinal and urinary forms of bilharziasis (the common name for schistosomiasis). One site we surveyed was a large dam on the outskirts of Kumasi, where I first saw a lily-trotter, a beautiful purplish-brown bird with long legs, its wide feet adapted for doing precisely what the name implies. It was oppressively hot, the grass was long, and I was grateful that Fergus had insisted on my wearing rubber boots when a six-foot black cobra slithered from the undergrowth to cross my path.

We went to the far northern region, where native, bare-breasted women carried huge hand-coiled clay pots on their heads; some wore only a bunch of leaves fore and aft. Colonies of wood ibis nested in the baobab trees, and of the numerous small dams most had an area at one end where the women washed clothes and children bathed; at the opposite end sacred crocodiles basked on the sandy shore. Sinister incidents involving these creatures were infrequent, but larger specimens found in the Black Volta, which forms the border with the Ivory Coast, were much feared. David’s empire extended to Gambaga in the north-east and Wa in the north-west of the country, and we visited both the MFU doctors, who came to Kintampo only if summoned by David. At Gambaga a young Frenchman, who was to marry within the year, lived a solitary existence; his only companion, apart from a manservant, was an importunate vervet monkey, which leapt around the house and ate from his master’s plate without constraint. That they escaped incineration, as the result of a lamp being knocked over, astounds me: the animal was deported to the bush shortly after Philippe’s bride, a Parisian ex-ballet dancer, took up residence.

The Polish doctor in charge of the clinic at Wa, Dr Korabiewicz, was an uniquely built giant, well over six feet tall, with a disproportionately short torso. In his mid-fifties he had, in addition to a medical degree, worked in a Warsaw museum on anthropological studies, and was an obsessive collector of native carvings. His personality was overpowering, but his second wife was far from subservient; the first had perished during a canoe trip down the Volga to the Black Sea. On our first visit he greeted us dressed only in a towel around his waist; a friend later commented: ‘You were lucky, mostly he’s naked.’ ‘Come in, come in,’ he said. ‘You must join us for lunch, my wife is crying, the fridge is broken, but you are most welcome.’ He seized me, kissing my arm from hand to elbow, before thrusting us into standard, kapok-cushioned, PWD chairs, and offering the first of a succession of drinks. Weather-beaten, with a pleasant, Slavic face, his now dry-eyed wife emerged from the kitchen to give us an equally warm welcome, seemingly unfazed by having to provide food for two unexpected guests. What the meal consisted of, I do not recall, but I shall never forget his insistence that we lower a glass of schnapps in one go before starting to eat. This was the start of a long friendship, though at the time we had no inkling that within two years we also would be stationed at Wa, helping to assemble his quarterly reports, the improvement in which David appreciated, while suspecting their authorship.

Back in Kintampo, there would regularly be an incident or dispute involving Adda’s extended family, who lived north of Bolgatanga in Navrongo near the border with Upper Volta, which Adda needed advice from us in order to resolve. I had already learned much from Fergus, so was not quite the easy touch he took me to be, but in truth the skills of the old colonial district officer were missed by the autochthonous people.

Snakes, scorpions, toads, mud-wasps, giant centipedes, swarming termites, soldier ants, praying mantes, a variety of exotic butterflies, an orphan civet cat, and a royal antelope became familiar during the six months before Fergus managed to amass the documents required to formalise our union, which was to take place late in November at the Municipal Council offices in Kumasi. In the meantime I offered to help any of the laboratory staff who wished to improve their English or learn keyboard skills. Initial response was enthusiastic, but when it became clear a lot of ‘homework’ would be expected, the class dwindled to the Kofi brothers. Both improved their standard of written English, and Daniel became an accurate typist.

Fergus, on his return for lunch one day called, ‘Come and look at this’, opening the boot of the car to produce five feet of writhing, brilliant, iridescent green snake. Going to see the cause of hue and cry outside his office, he had found that the team of compound cutters armed with machetes had so horribly injured it that he intervened to finish it off. Never having seen an example of muscular contraction after death, I found it hard to believe it really was dead; examination of the head revealed no front fangs, but some snakes have poison glands at the back, and David, no stranger to snakes, was convinced that this was one of them.

A young pangolin, found clinging to its mother after she was killed for chop, was brought to Fergus with a five shilling price tag. Curled up in a scaly ball, it stayed like that until dusk fell, when it uncurled to reveal a soft pink belly, beady little black eyes and a strong tail. Thumbing through wildlife books made depressing reading – there were no records of success in rearing. I mixed up dried baby formula, but was unsure what strength to offer, and using a glass pipette, dropped milk around the creature’s avid mouth. A lot got spilled, but enough went down to provide energy, and within days it was lumping around the house, climbing door frames and curtains, always returning to me, even, unless confined to its box, climbing into bed with us. I knew its only chance of survival lay in weaning, and teaching it how to find and break into ants’ nests, so I took it outside at night and released it at the bottom of a hollow tree, apprehensive it might not return. Suddenly the silence was broken by something unidentifiable making a hasty exit, followed by the pangolin. During the days I broke into ant hills, hating the panic it caused in the ordered community. All to no avail – Pangloss, as we called him, resolutely returned to climb my trousers without showing the slightest interest in the swarming feast on offer. From time to time I gave him a warm bath to get rid of the smell of sour milk lodged between his scales, but gradually signs that all was not well began. He became listless and uninterested in milk, his little belly was clammy, and his gait wobbly. The vet thought the symptoms were due to malnutrition and vitamin deficiency, so it was unanimously decided the kindest solution would be to put him to sleep in his box with chloroform-saturated bedding. This task fell to Fergus and we both shed tears. Later I learned from the zoologist George Cansdale that a diet of finely chopped meat mixed with egg white might have worked. This was the first of many emotional involvements with orphaned animals.

August brought a wire from Rudolf announcing that our divorce had been finalised. I was surprised to learn – not from him – that he had married, almost immediately, a Scottish woman he had met at a Highland dancing group. She was still of childbearing age, and within a year Rudolf, in his mid-fifties, who had never shown the remotest interest in children, was the proud father of a girl, to be followed by a boy two years later.

It was now a matter of urgency to arrange our own marriage before my already extended residence permit elapsed. So we set off for Accra, where Fergus, as well as routine meetings with Ministry of Health and WHO officials, had several lectures to give. A ring had to be bought for the forthcoming ceremony, but while there were countless goldsmiths in Accra who worked with pure gold, it was thought wiser to buy one of European origin. At the UTC there were only three to choose from, but my mind was preoccupied with the whereabouts of the nearest lavatory: in the throes of my first attack of belly palaver, I fled to the staff facilities, saying, ‘Oh that one will do’ and leaving Fergus to settle the bill. Made in Switzerland, it is a thin band of eighteen carat gold, engraved with a floral design now worn smooth.

A tennis-playing friend of Fergus, Leslie, and his Australian wife were to be witnesses, and had planned a celebratory feast to follow the ceremony. There had, however, been a major domestic upheaval, precipitated by the dismissal of their servant Kwaku, who had been with Leslie during his bachelor days. Kwaku’s attitude was analogous to that of the painter at Kintampo – obstruction, feigned deafness, deliberate misunderstanding, and ill-disguised resentment at the presence of a woman in the kitchen. There had been insolence, too, but not in Leslie’s presence until the week before our marriage when Kwaku had rashly asked if they wished to lose his valuable services. Stunned by the affirmative reply, he had turned nasty, cursing and threatening violent retribution, including intent to set fire to the house: the police had come to evict him. A succession of trial servants ensued, staying on average for two days; possibly ‘memsahib’ did have unrealistically high expectations.

For the wedding, I wore the tight-waisted black-and-white cotton dress my mother had made for Auntie Rosemary’s marriage two years before; crippling, kitten-heeled winklepickers and a shocking pink clutch bag completed the ensemble. Fergus wore the usual shorts, white knee socks, desert boots, crisp short-sleeved shirt and a tie. Litter-strewn cement stairs led to the noisy council offices, where we hung around for a while before anyone noticed us. Then a clerk, whose job it was to fill in the marriage certificate, escorted us to a large boardroom, where many junior clerks were scribbling and sorting forms. He began, with the deliberation of an Irish country policeman, to fill in the necessary information. ‘Parasitologist’ appears on two lines as ‘Parasito-Logist’, but he coped better with ‘Photographer’. After he had breathed heavily his way through two copies, we were herded into the Clerk’s office. He was an English-educated Ghanaian who had been good enough to dress smartly in a black suit and bow tie, and was very pleasant – apart from a tendency to indulge in banter on the lines of ‘You’ve had it now’, addressed to Fergus. The passage he chose to read from a fat, red legal tome concentrated on dire warnings about understanding that if either of us contracted a bigamous marriage during the life of the other, he or she would be open to punishment by the judiciary irrespective of where he or she was residing – not a word about loving and cherishing, though wifely subservience was emphasised. Then Fergus handed me the ring and I hissed, ‘Put it on’ – he claimed he was getting around to it – and that was that. Afterwards we went for drinks at the club, where Fergus and Leslie played two sweaty sets of tennis before we sat down to the best dinner the club could provide.

The following day we drove down a rough, precipitous track, in which heavy rain had carved deep fissures, to the crater lake of Bosumptwi. From where the track narrowed to a footpath, it was a steep walk to the shoreline settlement, carrying field glasses, camera, and a container for snails. We did not take the usual long-handled metal sieve – a tribal tradition dating back many centuries prohibited metal objects in the lake – but we saw many buckets and enamel bowls among the rickety chairs and tables outside a line of poorly maintained palm-thatched huts, the inhabitants of which, verging on hostile, were the surliest we were ever to encounter in Ghana. Despite the fact that visitors were a rarity, the children were persistent in their demands – ‘Massa, you give me penny.’ There was none of the light-hearted chatter associated with most village communities, the shoreline of the crater was hazy, and only a few primitive hollowed-out log boats, propelled by hand alone, were to be seen. Fergus found no interesting snails, and it took half an hour to climb out of the crater in the oppressive heat of early afternoon. Neither of us had worn a hat, and I thought of what I had read on the need to wear a solar topee at all times in the Guide Book for Young Colonial Officers, c. 1920. No ill effects ensued, and it was gratifying that neither of us was breathless. Only seven months had passed since my arrival – I was getting acclimatised.

At Kintampo, plans for celebration of the extended holiday over the Christmas and New Year period were already under way. Most of the senior staff, having had their fill of travel during the year, would remain on campus. A few enthusiasts said we should make a trip to a game reserve not far from Ouagadougou, where small populations of giraffe, lion, leopard and elephant had survived. It was not possible to book accommodation, and the risk of travelling hundreds of miles, staying at the most basic of rest-houses, only to see not much more than could, with luck, still be seen in northern Ghana, was high. While Kintampo remained fairly green, further north the dry season had already begun, leaves had curled brown, scrub fires were widespread, and the harmattan wind blew for the first time on the day the French let off their A-Bomb, so we probably got our share of fallout. The woodwork in the house started to crack like a pistol shot, and our noses felt in need of picking – mine often bled.

Three weeks in advance of the feast Adda suggested we might like to buy a turkey from a friend of his, and that it should stay with us, pending execution, to benefit from better feeding. I cannot recall the exact sum paid, but it struck me as no great bargain, even allowing for Adda’s ‘cut’. A rangy bird was duly tethered on a long rope to the ancient mango tree near Adda’s quarters. As one who disliked the process of selecting a fish from the tank in restaurants, I hated its reproachful presence. All this was prompted by horror stories circulating in European circles of vultures having been substituted. When the day of slaughter arrived, Adda waited until Fergus had left before asking if he might have some brandy to anaesthetise the bird. Aware that I was being taken for the fool I was, I handed over the best part of a bottle of brandy. What amount, if any, went down the turkey is unknown, but Adda was paralytic that night, sending a message by a small child to the effect that he had belly palaver. Fergus was furious, as our quarterly duty-free liquor allowance was running low, and the entertainment season imminent: this would include a visit over the New Year from friends in Accra, who were curious to experience the primitive lifestyle in the north, in contrast to the air-conditioned opulence of the capital.

Christmas Day, on which Adda had chosen to work in lieu of later leave to be spent with his family in Navrongo, began with the arrival of two small girls at the back door ‘to wish you a Merry Christmas’, who were paid off at three pence per head. Although we had already been visited several times by carol singers, another group arrived to render their version of ‘Good King Wenceslaus’ – I am sorry to say I laughed when it got to looking out on the snow ‘deep and crisp and even’. Fergus set up his easel and paints near the entrance doors to the central room, but found the presence of curious children, noses flattened on the mosquito netting, too distracting to continue and retreated to the bedroom and drew the curtains. The kitchen, now slightly less depressing and more hygienic, was mine until Adda came on duty at four thirty, and we fled to the tennis court.

On Boxing Day a fire came close to the house, and all hands were needed to beat the flames back, while cattle egrets sat on the fringe of the fire picking off fugitive insects. David, who had entertained us the previous evening, came to dinner, at which the predictably chewy bird appeared, stuffed traditionally (no Paxo), along with bread sauce, tinned cranberry sauce, such vegetables as I could muster, and rice in lieu of potatoes. Nobody said so, but two of David’s guinea fowl would have been preferable. I could not compete with Simba’s pink mousse, but managed a pie made from tinned apples mixed with mangoes, served with Carnation cream. I never attempted to make a traditional Christmas pudding or mince pies, as the mixture would have been a magnet for armies of sugar ants. The legs of every table stood in tins of water, but despite this, one would sometimes find tiny bodies in the pasta mix. Frank Wickramasingh, a Sri Lankan medical officer, and his English wife were also moved to entertain us: conversation, despite the wine, was not stimulating, though we did our best to introduce new topics, which were almost invariably cold-blanketed. Frau von Haller and the two girls returned to Germany to resume school, while Pappi completed his contract in Kintampo. There were few Germans in Ghana at that time, but rumours persisted that an ex-Nazi doctor ran a health centre at a small settlement in the south-east near the border with Togo: his lampshades made of human skin. Said to be an excellent doctor, in an area riddled with witch doctors, where voodoo and ritual sacrifice were rife, the lampshades might not have attracted much outrage.

We put on as good a show of hospitality as we could for the visiting party from Accra. Gilbert and Grace (who had made a pass at Fergus before I came on the scene) and their thirteen-year-old daughter, Charity, arrived irritable, coated with dust and complaining bitterly about the appalling state of the roads. All they wanted was a hot shower and lots of cold drinks. Fergus knew that the rest-house facilities ran to no more than a cracked handbasin and a stained bath, but hoped the caretaker would at least have warmed some water which could be brought by bucket to the bathroom. On his inspection, he had noted holes, not only in the mosquito proofing, but in the nets around the beds; but the lumpy kapok-filled mattresses would at least be dry at that time of year. Aware how much importance Gilbert attached to the chill of his drinks, Fergus had told the caretaker to be sure ice cubes were ready for the visitors, only to hear that the refrigerator ‘somehow he spoil’, but a replacement had been ordered. Attempting to lighten the atmosphere, we plied them with strong, iced drinks before breaking the news about the deficiencies of the rest-house. They had thermos flasks, which I could fill with cold water or tea, and as the water-filter was working, they would have a supply of tepid drinking water. They brought contributions of spirits and a case of Tusker, but nothing useful such as tinned cheese or frankfurters from Czechoslovakia.

Academically brilliant and studying Russian with plans to become an interpreter, Charity was petulant and as fussy about her food as her dyspeptic father. A plethora of pills was laid out before each place-setting every morning. Satisfying their fads and preferences, and the fact that our stores were running low, made my task as gracious hostess a nightmare. ‘No pepper for me … I’d like mine without pawpaw or banana … no mustard in the sandwiches, please … I can’t take fat … Oh, no salad dressing for me.’ Knowing that Fergus had a short fuse with pernickety feeders, I wondered how long it would be before he voiced his impatience. We organised a trip to the White Volta at Kadelso, fifty miles to the north, where the MFU kept a boat; normally game was scarce, but we had a very rich day. En route we saw a duiker, a family of mongooses, a rare vulture and large flocks of both common and rosy bee-eaters. The Public Works Department (PWD) mechanic in charge of the boat and its twostroke engine, and two locals said to be familiar with the river and its channels met us and we all packed into a sturdy-looking flat-bottomed boat. One of the locals kept a token hand on the rudder and clearly did not know right from left, giggling every time we shot past large rocks just below the surface, unperturbed when we hit them. Gilbert, who had a boat of his own in Accra, quickly took over the steering and tried to get the mechanic to slow down when everyone shouted, ‘Slow, rocks!’ We had no idea if the propeller was protected or not, and were afraid of holing the boat. Fergus had noticed there was only one paddle on board – the other was later found in the resthouse. At one point we were rotating slowly on a rock pinnacle from which only a massive shove with the paddle dislodged us. Excitement was heightened by the fact that a magnificent fifteen-foot crocodile was basking on the shore nearby. The party was uncharacteristically silent as, after two incidents of engine failure, we got safely ashore. The second local, it was divulged, had come along just for the ride. The following morning the visitors left, claiming to have had such an enjoyable holiday. I was thankful that Fergus had refrained from acerbic comment – after all, we might find ourselves in need of a bed in Accra sometime in the future.

The costs of implementing the Bilharzia Research Project were to be shared between the Ghana government and WHO, but the latter agency was feeling the financial pinch because certain large countries – the US among them – were behind with their contributions. It began to look probable that the scheme, unique in Africa, might be shelved in favour of more urgent public health problems, and would never get beyond the planning stage. Fergus was overdue for home leave and feeling end-of-tourish, but neither the regional office in Brazzaville nor headquarters in Geneva was acknowledging repeated demands for a decision on dates and itineraries for travel to Europe. An application for a month’s study leave at Danmarks Akvarium (Denmark’s aquarium at Charlottenlund) with the eminent malacologist Dr Mandahl-Barth had been ignored. It must be admitted, however, that due to continuing unrest and violence in the Congo, the director of the regional office will have had more important things on his mind than travel authorisation for a relatively junior staff member.

Our evenings were spent, Campari or gins and Dubonnet in hand, with thoughts of returning to Europe by car. We would pore over maps of the route to Kano and thence north across the Sahara Hoggar route; the alternative was to head west to Dakar and the Atlas Mountain range to Tangier. Ultimately the time involved, the fact that the Ford Zephyr was showing its age and what went on under the bonnet was largely a puzzle to Fergus, combined with the knowledge that the French authorities demanded a large deposit to cover costs if they had to go on a rescue mission, led to rejection of the plan – much to my mother’s relief.

In the meantime, we went on a trip to the south-west, accompanied by several field assistants in the Land Rover, to conduct a survey of transmission sites: the MFU offices and laboratories were at Ho, and the medical officer in charge was another young Italian, Erminio Onori, whose wife had not long given birth to their first child. Inspecting the baby in its cot under a frilly white canopy, I experienced, for the first time, a flutter of broodiness – it might not be such a bad idea after all. Like the Roseis at Kintampo, the Onoris ate well: two generous meals per day were already reflected by Erminio’s portly bulk. They were generous hosts, pressing us to stay with them rather than at the MFU guesthouse, and there was much bawdy mirth one morning when we had to confess that our bed had collapsed. Tragedy later struck the family; the baby girl whom we had admired in the cot was killed in a riding accident, and Erminio had a fatal heart attack before he was fifty.

The rains came late in the spring of 1961 and with morning temperatures of 85 degrees Fahrenheit in the house, rising to over 105 during the afternoon, humidity was high. There was no fan in Fergus’s office, now twenty-two months into his tour, and he knew his powers of concentration were poor. It was around this time that his resolve that we should not acquire any more orphaned animals was broken when a tiny royal antelope, its umbilical cord still dangling, was presented with a price tag of six shillings: one of the smallest antelope in the world, no longer common, and reputedly very hard to rear. An American game warden infuriated me by repeating while I was in the process of feeding it: ‘You sure got a rare little animal there, yeah, you sure got a rare little animal. Very delicate though, very hard to rear, even a loud noise may be enough to kill them.’ The last was nonsense, as it travelled many miles with us in the Land Rover, experiencing jolts, banging doors and lurches into potholes. It appeared to be doing well, taking plenty of milk and eating greenery, and its droppings were normal, but it remained shy and did not recognise me outside its pen. When it began to weaken and refused milk, I discovered its tongue was ulcerated and I force-fed it. After two days, it was stronger and I gave it – as recommended by Cansdale for duikers – some chopped hibiscus and cassava leaves. It died in my lap shortly after. Maybe it was not the cassava leaves that were to blame, but the forced-feeding, which is never recommended – I shall never know. My admiration for the Durrells and Attenboroughs of this world, who sacrifice hours of sleep preparing warm, sterile feeds in often unsuccessful attempts to save orphaned animals, remains boundless to this day.

It is true what they say – the smell of the rain precedes, sometimes for days, the first drops; the sky changes and huge white clouds appear against a dark blue backcloth. Faint flutters of wind disturb the air, a pall of hush descends, broken only by squawks from birds skulking in the scrub – the proverbial lull before a storm. The rains came in late March, washing the red dust from leaves and freshening the air, and the tiny green shoots that had appeared soon after the fires ceased rapidly developed into mature plants. Adda returned with his two children and his senior wife, who had a bulge showing under the little missionary-inspired frill of her cloth, so gatherings near the back door were enlivened.

One of the regular callers was an old man who lived in an isolated house hidden in the bush nearby. He was paranoid about his relatives, to the extent that he would accept no help, in the belief that they intended to poison him for his savings, said to be hidden in his hovel. He was illiterate, and advice to put his money into a bank savings account was dismissed as folly – ‘All they give you is a small book, and how do you know you will ever see it again?’ (Writing, as I am, after the global financial crash and the demise of a few large banks, this viewpoint seems the epitome of wisdom.) He was painfully thin, but always brought some small offering, a pawpaw, some aubergines or a corn-cob, in gratitude for the buckets of water and mugs of sweet tea that Adda dispensed. One day we heard that he was ill, so we went to visit and were shocked to see how frugally he lived. There was a pallet of cassava drying outside the hut, one rickety chair, an orange box, an enamel dish with a hole in the bottom, a bucket and a calabash. A scraggy white kitten scuttled for cover in the palm roof as we arrived with Adda, who disapproved of the mission, as translator. His afflictions were many, ranging from general aches and pains, to lassitude and a shiny swollen foot. He flatly refused Adda’s advice to go to the health centre, saying he would die for sure, so we were surprised when he capitulated to an order from Fergus.

I drove him to the clinic, where Dr Wickramasingh, who was on duty, said it was a clear case of blood-poisoning, and he would have to open the foot. This was done in my presence without anaesthetic: I had never seen anything so unpleasant, nor heard such screams as a stream of pus spurted and then flowed steadily into a dish while the doctor continued probing the incision to clear away as much as possible. I feared the old man might turn violent and hold me responsible for the agony, but instead he was touchingly grateful, getting obediently into the car for follow-up trips to have his wound dressed. I sent food while he was too weak to make his own meals, and found one cause of his malnutrition: relatives in the village had brought food while he was sick, but so firmly convinced was he that they were trying to poison him, it had been thrown away.

One morning we awoke to the chatter of a PWD workforce in the compound; wielding scythes, they had started to flatten the area that was ablaze with the annual display of pinkish-orange Ashanti lilies. Some had fallen by the time we got out, screaming ‘STOP’, but most were saved; we never heard who had issued the order, but it certainly was not David. Another incident involved the wife of a neighbour. Sounds of a high-pitched female tirade drifted over the grass, and I could see the woman, arms akimbo, haranguing one member of a work team disposed in the shade of a large tree, enjoying one of its chop breaks. His responses were strident, and I feared fisticuffs, but when his co-workers loudly voiced their support, they all stomped off towards the office block. The woman had lent money at an extortionate rate, and the man was behind in his payments. David was called in to arbitrate, and told the husband to ensure his wife ceased money-lending, if not entirely, at least to any MFU employee.

My own relationship with David had improved now that I wore a thin gold band of respectability, but sometimes an evil spirit prompted me to strike a wrong note, such as expressing anti-monarchist sentiments and referring scathingly to ‘Our Dear Queen’ in a tone he must have found offensive. Fergus pointed out such behaviour was more suited to a teenager, and I was contrite afterwards, but used similar ploys at excruciating dinner parties in Accra, where talk inevitably turned to general disillusionment with the post-independence regime, the unreliability of servants, the insanitary state of the hospitals. I found it difficult not to doze off during the interminable afterdinner discussions, often shaming Fergus with feeble attempts to remain alert. He said I looked like an octogenarian, head dropping slowly to chest level, only to jerk up with glazed eyes and a slack smile, pretending that I had not missed a word. I attributed such behaviour to the climate, consumption of too much food and alcohol, plus overwhelming boredom.

I suffered my first attack of malaria – probably contracted at Wa where drug-resistant strains had been identified – and a bout of suspected amoebic dysentery, the latter reminiscent of the food poisoning blamed on cold chicken at Stevenson’s Restaurant in Derry. While I was still limp from the experience, we planned another exploratory trip to Wa, increasingly likely to be our next posting, having been chosen as the preferred base for a bilharzia research and control project, should it get the green light. WHO offered Fergus a further two-year contract until the end of 1963, but refused his request to study at Danmarks Akvarium, writing: ‘The invitation was sent to you personally, so we do not feel obliged to contribute in any way towards travel costs’, with the rider that any time spent there would be deducted from home leave. This was rich at a time when many staff members were flitting off to the US for six months’ study leave on full pay and per diem expenses covered. Thus began my list of grievances against the hierarchy at both the regional office in Brazzaville and headquarters in Geneva.

When eventually we went on leave, plans to visit the Canary Islands were scrapped in favour of Greece, where we stayed in Athens, at that time relatively free of pollution. We visited all the tourist sites, then undertook a perilous drive along the cliff-side road to Piraeus, from where we boarded a ferry overloaded with passengers, miserable poultry tied by their feet, and numerous loudly protesting goats, to Cephalonia. The first Xenia hotel had yet to be completed and the Captain Corelli effect yet to strike. We stayed on the west side, in a small hotel perched above an almost too perfect crescent of sand fringed by dwarf conifers; the water was emerald green shading to deep lapis lazuli. It took some days to accustom ourselves to the leisurely pace of life and the siesta, which seemed to last from early afternoon through to nine at night, when signs of activity were heard from the kitchen. Food was not haute cuisine; in fact, the choice was limited to three stews: one based on goat, one on chicken and a fish mixture faintly resembling bouillabaisse, as well as a ratatouille. The pasta, which was served with everything, was glutinous.

We explored the countryside on foot, and were often invited into houses, where a member of the family, home from the mainland, spoke fair English – our Greek was nonexistent. The war, German occupation, the disastrous earthquake and current affairs were favoured topics, and there were often references to the US. There was almost total ignorance about the location of Ireland and its place in the British Isles. The islanders were steeped in Greek Orthodoxy but seemed tolerant of other faiths. They knew little about Africa, apart from Egypt being at the top, and showed no more than polite interest when told about Ghana. We swam in a little bay thinking we were the only people around, but when I went to get the rucksack I had left near a large rock, it had disappeared: so not all the locals were friendly. Luckily I had a spare swimsuit and hideous white floral rubber bathing cap such as seen in early James Bond films. We ate one delicious meal prepared by an enterprising young chef on another beach. The atmosphere was like a family barbecue with fresh shellfish, a giant platter resembling paella and a fish stew much superior to the one at the hotel. Of the other guests I remember only a French couple with three children: the wife wore a bikini – daring in 1961 – and, despite the children, had a figure to match. The older children were allowed watered wine at mealtimes, but the three-year-old protested rather too vehemently, ‘Je n’ai pas bu, Maman.’

After Greece, we spent a few days in Geneva, during which we were invited to a soiree by Dr Ansari, then head of the tropical diseases division, and Fergus’s mentor. Urbane, and oozing charm, he was a close relative of the Shah of Iran; his wife and ballet-dancer daughter were discreetly elegant. Not wanting to be totally eclipsed, I bought an outrageously expensive pair of Swiss Bally shoes, and a black and blue checked jersey suit with a very tight skirt. Worn with the handbag made in London from Tamale crocodile skin, a Jacqmar silk scarf and the string of grey pearls Fergus had bought for me in Mayfair’s Burlington Arcade, I felt the crawled-out-of-the-bush image was temporarily erased. (But when I got off the plane in Belfast, wearing this outfit, my mother was shocked by my weight loss – a mere eight stone twelve ounces, a low never achieved since.) A benign autumn passed all too quickly, followed by a skiing holiday in Verbier, which, like Cephalonia, had yet to capitulate to the forces of mass tourism. I hope something has been done in the intervening half-century about the pervasive smell of drains.

While in Europe, we took the opportunity to spend a week in Copenhagen, before Fergus left for two months at the regional office in Brazzaville, at the end of which it was hoped the Ghana government would have signed the plan of operations for the project at Wa. We saw the Danish Royal Ballet performing the young Kenneth MacMillan’s Danses Concertantes, The Burrow, and Solitaire. The weather was overcast, cold and wet for most of our stay, but Sunday was brilliant and Bengt Friis-Hansen, with whom Fergus had worked in Northern Rhodesia, took us to his cottage in the country. After a long walk through the forest, we returned to a blazing fire and lunch of rye bread with a variety of pickled fish, including eels. During the days, Fergus paid informal visits to the Akvarium in Charlottenlund to assess the place and meet the staff, not least the formidable Mandahl-Barth. I strolled around the shops, in which the prices were almost as intimidating as those in Geneva; I bought my first piece of Jensen jewellery – a smooth silver brooch with a nautilus centre – a lovely silk scarf and an emerald green Robin Hood style hat for good measure. We parted at Amsterdam: Fergus flew to Brazzaville and I back to Ireland: the first of many such separations.